GUJRAT: The Surgical Instruments and Metal Testing Laboratory (SIMTEL), Sialkot, has been in a dilapidated condition for a long time, requiring an upgrade and affiliation with an international lab as per globally required certifications.

Moreover, the lab instruments procured around three years ago with Rs30m funds are still lying in the packing. A sum of Rs202m has been spent on the lab so far but it is hardly serving the purpose.

The machinery and the testing apparatuses are 20-year-old and are mostly nonfunctional due to lack of maintenance. They require repair from time to time whereas tests done at the lab have no accreditation from any international standard body.

Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP), Sialkot Director Khalid Rasool, has sought a financial audit of the SIMTEL to ascertain the facts that turned the laboratory into a mess from a promising initiative of international standards.

According to a detailed report, submitted by the TDAP director to the higher authorities in the Ministry of Commerce, the SIMTEL was established in the year 2000; however, the space of laboratory had been squeezed from time to time. It has now been confined to a hall over 2.5 kanal land while the rest of the area is being used by Surgical Instruments Manufacturers Association of Pakistan (SIMAP).

The report also opposed the SIMAP’s demand of complete acquisition of the lab, saying that given the past conduct of the SIMAP, the lab will fade away if it is handed over to it.

At present, the SIMTEL, after bearing all expense, earns around Rs400,000 per month from the laboratory and it bears all its expenditures, including the staff salaries.

The process of issuance of certificate and collection of fees was vague until Sept 13, 2019 and there was no criterion of collection of fee and the amount deposited with the bank was far less than the export figures of the industry.

However, the TDAP Sialkot intervened and shifted the certificate issuance to online system through software where all records and the collected fees were accessible to the admin from anywhere.

Hence, with this application, the revenue increased manifold. The QRC code generated certificates were being issued to curb counterfeit issuance of certificates but this practice was stopped in October 2020 due to unknown reasons, leading to a sharp decline in revenue, once again.

The TDAP director recommended continuation of fee at a 0.04pc of the invoice of each exporting shipment made mandatory it mandatory on Nov 1, 2002. Any change in this regard would mean shutting down the SIMTEL. He said a proper independent and fully empowered testing facility should be established under the guidance of the board of trustees for which a study might be conducted through an international or local consultant to determine the current manufacturing practices, sources/types of raw material used, currently employed quality control/quality assurance standards, etc., in order to determine the facilities to be set up or upgraded.

The report said the SIMAP, in violation of the mandate, had given a major chunk of the land earmarked for the SIMTEL for construction of the Common Facility Centre (CFC) by the PCSIR, which further reduced the lab to one small hall and due to this reduction in space. The machinery has been haphazardly placed, making its use difficult.

A Sialkot-based exporter says that EU’s Medical Device Regulation (MDR) had introduced a new regulatory framework adopted by EU Parliament in 2017, which came into force on May 25, 2020 and the MDR Certification was mandatory to export surgical instruments to Europe.

There, the importance of an independent and certified lab has increased in the wake of new testing and certification requirements, which, if delayed, would hamper surgical exports to the rest of the world.

The SIMAP is said to have been divided internally into two groups. The group comprising major exporters wants the SIMTEL to be transformed as an international standard lab while the group comprising small and medium enterprises wants to have a complete control over the lab.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2021